Indeed, the preposition bis is most often translated as "until" when used in sentences about time. You have also likely seen von and biszu (or ab and bis zu) used together to denote a timespan. Note the use of the dative.

In Deutschland haben Kinder ab dem Alter von drei Jahren bis zur Einschulung einen Anspruch auf einen Kindergartenplatz.Starting at the age of three until enrollment in school, children in Germany are entitled to a place in a kindergarten. Caption 20, Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Einbürgerungstest

When we speak about deadlines in English, we use the preposition "by." As it turns out, this is one of many instances in which "by" is not equivalent to bei. Indeed, bis and bis zum/zur are used to express this as well.

Further Learning Any time you speak about a deadline in your German class or in a real-life situation, note the use of bis or use it yourself! Examples could include... Bis wann muss die Hausarbeit abgegeben werden? (in class), Bis wann müssen wir das Zimmer geräumt haben? (at a hotel), or Bis wann muss der Bericht fertig sein? (in a meeting).

In English, one way of saying that an event is finished or done with is to say that it's "over." In German, the word über, though usually meaning "about," is sometimes translated as "over" when it is referring to the physical placement of something:

Further Learning Go to Yabla German and see the many other examples of vorbei and vorüber in a real world context. See too if you can correctly translate the title of this week's lesson: Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei. Hint: the direct translation "fat years" isn't quite right!

The above is a common German phrase that appears a bit odd in English, in that it seems to have the prepositions "on" and "to" in it, but that's not the case. On its own, the verb zukommen means "to belong to" or "to be assigned to," but when you add the preposition auf, together with a direct object such as einen, mich, dich, sie, ihn, uns, etc., its meaning changes:

Damit war eigentlich nur gemeint, ob euch klar war, wie viel da auf euch zukommt. I actually just meant whether it was clear in your mind how much there is in store for you. Caption 20, Luxuslärm: Interview

As you see above, depending upon the context, auf [einen] zukommen is variously translated as "to be expecting someone or something," "to be reaching someone or something," "to be approaching someone or something," "to be coming toward someone or something," and "to be in store for someone or something."

Further Learning Look at the examples above on Yabla German to get a better grasp of the contexts in which auf einen zukommen is used so that you can better understand its meaning and learn how to integrate the phrase into your own vocabulary.

Further Learning Based on the structures you see above, make up your own sentences with je and desto / umso. If you need some comparative adjectives to get you started, you can find a few helpful tables on this page.You can also visit Yabla German and look for further examples.

Das macht zusammen vierzig Euro fünfzig. Zahlen Sie bar oder mit Karte? All together that is forty euros and fifty cents. Will you be paying in cash or with a card? Caption 7, Nicos Weg: Zahlen, bitte!

Although you might be able to come up with a mnemonic device that you find helpful, simply remembering that Ich möchte zahlen means "I would like to pay" may be enough to help you sort it out. At the same time, you might still find that you get flustered mid-sentence trying to remember which verb is correct. It doesn't help that the noun die Zahlen means the "the numbers." It is the plural version of the noun die Zahl:

And one final note: you probably have wondered what the difference is between zahlen and bezahlen. The truth is that they are often interchangeable, but there are some instances where zahlen is wrong. For example, when you speak about paying a person for a service, you would generally use bezahlen and not zahlen.

Further Learning Look up the meanings of the related verbs anzahlen, zurückzahlen, and auszahlen, and search Yabla German to find them used in a real-world context. Some words related to zählen are die Volkszählung ("census") and der Stromzähler ("the electricity meter").

If you examine the root word and prefix of the separable verb ausschließen and the adjective ausgeschlossen, you find the verb schließen ("to shut") and the prefix aus ("out"). These words may, in some contexts, be translated respectively as "to shut out" to "shut out," but they are more commonly used in a figurative sense.

Thus, the adjective ausgeschlossen is generally translated, depending on the context, as "excluded" or "ruled out." As a simple interjection, however, an exclamatory Ausgeschlossen! means "impossible."

Some other possible translations of ausschließen, depending on the context, can be "to exclude," "to preclude," "to expel," "to eliminate," and "to disqualify."

Note that the verb ausschließen always has the last syllable written with an ß rather than ss. Just to make it slightly complicated, however, the simple past tense (Indikativ) and subjective mood (Konjunktiv II) of ausschließen are written with ss instead of ß: ich schloss aus ("I ruled out") and ich schlösse aus ("Were I to rule out"). You can easily remember this in that long vowel sounds like ie always take the ß afterwards, and short vowels like o the letters ss.

The German language does not have an equivalent to the rather odd phrase above, which originated in the proverb that the proof of the flavor of a pudding is in the eating of it. The phrase means that the end result is the mark of the success or failure of one’s efforts or planning. The most common words used as "proof," or "evidence," or "to prove" in German are the noun der Beweis and the verb beweisen. Here are some examples of the noun:

So beweist NIKI, dass sich Wirtschaftlichkeit und guter Service miteinander verbinden lassen. That's how NIKI proves that economy and good service can be connected with one another. Captions 34-35, Fluglinien: Niki Air

Im Video zur ersten Single muss Clueso dann auch gleich beweisen, dass er noch fit ist. In the video of the first single, Clueso must also then immediately prove that he is still fit. Captions 6-7, Clueso: ist endlich erwachsen

Further Learning Go to Yabla German and see the various forms of der Beweis and beweisen used in a real-world context. If you want to go deeper, read this German Wikipedia article about the legal differences between der Hauptbeweis, der Gegenbeweis, and der Beweis des Gegenteils.

You probably came across the verbs gehören and gefallen quite quicklywhen you began learning German. They both belong to a group of verbs in German that require a dative object. They are both a bit perplexing at first because most past participles in German begin with ge- (and gehört is indeed the past participle of hören),and also because they follow a particular structure when used in a sentence that doesn't necessarily match the structure in English.

Notice that in the case of gehören we use the same structure in English, whereas with gefallen the sentence doesn't translate directly. The closest we could come in English is "It pleases me," but this is rarely used nowadays.

Now let's look at gelingen. We notice right away that, like gehören and gefallen, it begins with ge-, which can cause some confusion since it resembles a past participle. Gelingen is indeed the infinitive, and gelungen is the participle.

Gelingen means "to succeed," "to work out," or "to manage to do something." When we express this in English, the structure is very different. You could almost say that the subject and object are switched. Whereas Das gehört mir is easily translatable as "That belongs to me," there is no such easy direct translation for phrases like Es gelingt ihnen or Es ist mir gelungen in English.

Den Tauchern gelingen die ersten Filmaufnahmen dieses Verhaltens. The divers manage to get the first film footage of this behavior. Caption 35, Alpenseen: Kühle Schönheiten

In the sentences above, the subjects are die ersten Filmaufnahmen and die Flucht and the objects are den Tauchern and ihm. In English, this is essentially reversed, or the adjective "successful" is employed. Here are a few more examples:

Further Learning Some verbs that follow similar structures in German (but not always in English!) include: fehlen, gehorchen, passen, schmecken, and wehtun. Look these up, and then go to Yabla German to see them used in a real-world context.

If you look carefully at the words gespannt and entspannt in the sentence below, you'll notice that gespannt is a participle (of spannen), whereas entspannt is an adverb.

Dann werden die Pferde vor die Kutsche gespannt und man kann ganz entspannt durch Dahlem fahren. Then the horses are hitched up in front of the coach and one can ride very leisurely through Dahlem. Captions 39-40, Berlin: Domäne Dahlem

However, you have probably also seen gespannt used as an adjective, and also perhaps come across spannend or verspannt. Let's take a look at some examples and clarify the meanings of all of these words.

Above, entspannt is used as an adverb to mean "leisurely" or "in a relaxed way." As an adjective it means "relaxed," or you might see it as the verb entspannen, which means — you guessed it — "to relax."

Make sure that you understand all related words and can identify what part of speech they occupy in sentences using context clues. This includes the verbs spannen, sich entspannen, (sich) verspannen, and anspannen. There are many examples available on Yabla German.

You are probably familiar with the name of the German governmental department responsible for relations with foreign countries: das Auswärtige Amt. This is the German equivalent of the Department of State in the United States or the Foreign Office in the United Kingdom. The adverb auswärts, however, is often used in sports:

A literal translation of the above would render auswärts as only "away," but for clarity it's been translated for meaning as "an away game." In the next captions, you see the word as part of some nominalizations:

As you can see, the definite articles in the nominative case must take on the accusative case as relative pronouns: das/das, der/den, die/die.

But in the case of neuter nominatives, the German word was (usually translated as "what") is also used as a relative pronoun. The use of was as a relative pronoun is generally restricted to two usages, one of which is for neuter substantivized superlatives (nouns based upon adjectives), such as das Beste or das Schönste:

Das Schönste, was ich gelesen habe, war ein Buch von Goethe.

The German word was is also used as a relative pronoun with neuter demonstrative and indefinite pronouns, such as das, dasjenige, dasselbe; alles, einiges, nichts, vieles, manches, weniges, etwas, and so forth.

Don't feel bad if this seems hard—even native speakers sometimes get it wrong by accident or as slang usage. The full title of the song above by Xavier Naidoo is "Ich kenne nichts (das so schön ist wie du)." According to grammar rules, the das should have been was. It's also a common mistake among native speakers to say or write things like Das Buch, was ich gelesen habe and Das Buch, dass ich gelesen habe. Luckily, we now know the correct way to write it!

In English, the prefixes "in-" and "un-" and the suffix "-less" are used to suggest a lack or negation when they are added to an adjective. In German, you will see un- and -los for negative adjectives (and adverbs!). Sometimes the resulting adjective will look similar to its English equivalent:

At the same time, you will need to be careful and learn the words individually, as there are plenty of adjectives that don't translate so clearly. Sometimes, a different suffix or prefix is used in the other language, and other times the real translation is a word that looks completely different. There are also plenty of false friends lurking about!

Es sind so wenig Menschen arbeitslos wie seit zwanzig Jahren nicht. There haven't been so few unemployed people in twenty years. Caption 43, Angela Merkel: Neujahrsansprache

Further Learning Do you know what the following adjectives/adverbs mean? Take a guess, and then see if you are right using a German to English dictionary. Mackellos, zeitlos, gehörlos, hoffnungslos, gnadenlos, erfolglos, beispiellos, drahtlos,unverschämt, unfähig, unabhängig, unabsehbar, unerträglich, unfassbar, unflexibel, unverbindlich.

Some people see the rise of populism, with Donald Trump in the United States and the Brexit movement in the UK, as a threat to democracy. Fans of Trump and Brexit, however, see these developments as a legitimate expression of democracy. Germany too has seen a rise in populist movements in recent years, but with Germany's history—the Nazis, the Second World War, and the Holocaust—the country is particularly sensitive to extreme right-wing political movements.

There was a major controversy in 2011 when it was discovered that the murder of nine immigrants in Germany, all previously falsely attributed by the German police to immigrant criminal gangs, turned out to have been committed by a group of German neo-Nazis called the NSU (Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund).

In 2014, a political movement called Pegida was founded in Dresden. The name stands for Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes, or "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident." The founder of Pegida resigned in 2015 after releasing images showing him posing as Adolf Hitler and making racist statements, but he was later re-elected to lead the movement.

The AfD party currently (February 2019) occupies 91 (12.8%) of 709 seats in the German Parliament.

The conservative Bavarian CSU leader Franz Josef Strauß once declared, "Rechts von der CSU darf es keine demokratisch legitimierte Partei geben," or "No democratically legitimate party should be allowed to exist to the right of the CSU." But with the AfD firmly established in German parliament, it appears Strauß's idea of limiting the right wing has now been overstepped. German voters, like voters in many countries in recent years, appear to be fed up with career politicians who seem to do nothing for the common man. Whether these right-wing parties and movements will actually change things for the better remains to be seen.

Further Learning Read some German Wikipedia articles on Pegida and the AfD and get more insight into the rise of populism in recent years in Germany.

Further Learning There are many sentences that include the verb ziehen on Yabla German, so do a quick search if you need more examples. You can also review past newsletters in which we looked at the phrases Bilanz ziehen and Es zieht!

There are a number of expressions in English that involve the noun "head," among them ones like the headline above, "to give someone a heads up," or "out of their head." Most phrases like this can't be translated into German directly, and the slang or idiomatic phrases in German that use der Kopf are not directly translatable to English either.

It's a bit difficult in a literal translation to understand what is meant by sich keinen Kopf machen, but luckily the Yabla videos also clarify the meaning: The Großstadtrevier video states "slang, don't worry," and the Mark Förster video states "idiom, why do you worry so much?"

Wann finde ich endlich die Zeit, meinen Kopf freizubekommen? When will I finally find the time to get my head free?

This doesn't mean that your head is literally stuck in something, but rather that you want to find the time to "clear your mind." Another variation is den Kopf freimachen.

Although we all know the English expression "to lose your head," it's usually a figure of speech meaning somebody is becoming irrational.

Wir machen ihn einen Kopf kürzer. We'll make him a head shorter.

This expression, like the origin of the English expression, could mean to execute somebody by lopping off their head, but einen Kopf kürzer machen is usually used figuratively to mean that you will reprimand somebody or "teach them a lesson."

Further Learning Go to Yabla German and search for the term Kopf and see the various ways such expressions are used.

Further Learning Watch the video Eva erklärt: Gesundheit in its entirety to get an overview of various symptoms and cures for winter ailments. If you already have a cold, we at Yabla wish you gute Besserung! Otherwise, bleib gesund!

I recently received an email in German in which the writer replied gerne geschehen, astandard response when somebody has thanked you for something. I often hear this phrase in spoken German, but usually as gern geschehen, without the -e after gern. The adverbs gern and gerne have the same meaning, usually translated as "gladly" or "like," so how do we know which one to use in which contexts?

The answer is very simple: you can use both interchangeably. The original Old German word, from which our modern usage originates, is gerno. This eventually became the modern German word gerne. Even as recently as 20 or so years ago, teachers may have admonished students for using gern instead of gerne in their written German. But eventually, the language as it is spoken began to have an impact on what was considered correct usage, and with time, the dropping of the extra syllable -e allowed for the word to be accepted on equal footing as either gerne or gern: they are, for all intents and purposes, the same word!

Let's take a look at some examples of gern and gerne being used in a spoken context on Yabla German:

Ich würde gern mit dir in einer Altbauwohnung wohnen. I would like to live with you in an apartment in an old building. Caption 7, AnnenMayKantereit: 3. Stock

Ich würde in der Tat gern wissen, wie groß das Team ist, mit dem ich dann zusammenarbeite. In fact, I would like to know how big the team is that I would be working with. Captions 48-49, Eva erklärt: Bewerbungen

Further Learning Take a look at these interesting articles about gerne and gern at Tandem Göttingen, German with Nicole, and the Zwiebelfisch series at Der Spiegel magazine. You can also search Yabla German for other examples of gerne and gern being used in conversations. In a forthcoming lesson, we'll discuss the the difference between gerne and mag!

This week, let's look at some verbs related to computers and technology! Many of these phrases are intuitive for anyone who speaks English, for example eine Mail öffnen or ein Fenster schließen, or ein Programm neu starten.

Below, you can see that the verb anhängen ("to attach") also works for email attachments:

However, it is often necessary to learn some new vocabulary. For example, to unlock a computer or cell phone, we use the verb entsperren or freischalten, and not aufschließen or entriegeln as you would for a door. And then, of course, there are the words that are relatively new to both languages.

Ich habe auch ein E-Mail-Konto für Sie eingerichtet, welches Sie überprüfen können, sobald Sie eingeloggt sind. I have set up an email account for you as well, which you can check as soon as you are logged in. Caption 34-35, Berufsleben: das Vorstellungsgespräch

Further Learning For a list of words (including nouns and adjectives) related to computers and technology, you can look at this extensive list. Missing from this list are many "Denglisch" verbs related to technology (downloaden, updaten...), but these should not be used in your German class anyway! They are often used in office settings, but are still essentially slang and used mostly among younger co-workers. It is best to know the real German words.